TIME Magazine called him “one of the most formidable figures in the world of Christian thought.” Newsweek once labeled him “the world’s leading New Testament scholar.” His name is N.T. Wright, and he has just written a controversial book on the Bible.

In “Surprised by Scripture: Engaging Contemporary Issues,” Wright comes out swinging on theological hot buttons such as Darwinian evolution, whether Adam was a historical figure, and why he thinks the Bible makes space for women pastors. Here, we discuss his ideas about what the Bible is and isn’t, and why he doesn’t call him a Biblical “inerrantist.”

RNS: No matter where a Christian falls on the spectrum, you’ll find something in this book to love and something to ruffle your feathers. Why did you decide to pen a book that touches on so many contentious issues? Do you expect pushback?

NTW: The book emerged from many different situations over a period of a few years. I didn’t set out to ruffle feathers, but to try to bring some biblical clarity to areas in which many Christians today, in the UK as well as the USA, are genuinely confused. So much of what people take to be “Christianity” is in fact an odd combination of things that really are in the Bible with things that are part of western culture from the last two or three hundred years. Figuring out which is which and how it all works is bound to be puzzling to some people if they’ve been firmly taught something else.

A lifetime of working in some very different churches has taught me that people come with all kinds of odd ideas and that a little clear biblical teaching goes a long way, and also that sometimes people resist it nervously because “it’s not what they said in Sunday School.” I’m all for Sunday schools, but there is a time for people to grow up and see things differently.

Book cover courtesy of HarperOne

RNS: Belief in “the inerrancy of scripture” is a big deal for a lot of conservative evangelicals in America. But you don’t consider yourself an inerrantist. Why not?

NTW: I don’t think I’ve ever said “I am not an inerrantist.” But the controversies which gave rise to that label were strongly conditioned by a shrunken post-enlightenment rationalism, and I would hate to perpetuate that. It’s possible that “inerrancy” is, so to speak, the right answer to the wrong question. It’s a bit like “transubstantiation” in the Middle Ages: if someone asks, “Is Jesus really present in the breaking of the bread?” you have to say “Yes,” but if the only philosophical framework you have for doing so is Aristotle’s metaphysics you will come out with an answer which sends the wrong signals.

My book on scripture’s authority, Scripture and the Authority of God, makes clear where I stand. I take the whole of scripture utterly seriously, and I regret that many who call themselves “inerrantists” manage to avoid the real challenge at its heart, that is, Jesus’ announcing that in and through his work God really was “becoming king” over the world in a whole new way. So I don’t call myself an “inerrantist” (a) because that word means what it means within a modernist rationalism, which I reject and (b) because it seems to me to have failed in delivering a full-blooded reading and living of what the Bible actually says. It may have had a limited usefulness as a label against certain types of “modernist” denial, but it buys into at least half of the rationalist worldview which was the real problem all along.

RNS: We talk a lot about reading the Bible, but you say the Bible reads the modern world. How so?

NTW: This is, of course, a manner of speaking. The trouble is that for many people, the modern world—including the “Christian” modern world—has come with a set of major cultural expectations and has chopped the Bible down to the size which will fit. We need to be conscious and intentional in doing it the other way round—letting the Bible set the terms, and then understanding the modern world within its framework, its great story. Only so will we recognize the things that have gone drastically wrong in our culture and what we should be doing to challenge them.

RNS: You address the question of whether Adam was a historical figure in one of the first chapters of the book, and you’re also an authority on the Apostle Paul. Another Theologian I respect, Dr. Albert Mohler, has written, “If Adam was not a historical figure, and thus if there was no Fall into sin and all humanity did not thus sin in Adam, then Paul’s telling of the Gospel is wrong.” How do you respond?

NTW: It is possible to get to the right answer for the wrong reasons. For example, if you think that 2+2 = 5 but also that 4+4 =7 then if someone asks you “what is 2+2+4+4?” you will say “12” and be correct, but for two wrong reasons.

I don’t know what logic Mr. Mohler is applying in the quote you give. I think it’s probably that of the “covenant of works,” found in the Westminster Confession and elsewhere, according to which God gives Adam a kind of moral test which he fails. Then he runs the test again with Jesus and he gets it right, so his “getting-it-right” (aka “righteousness”) is available for the rest of us. Obviously if you take Adam out of that equation it falls apart.

I do not believe that that is a good way of describing how biblical theology works, for reasons I’ve gone into at length in other books. In particular, I don’t think it’s how Paul expounds “justification by faith.” So I think the “covenant of works” line is a kind of 2+2 = 5 thing. But that doesn’t mean Mr. Mohler and his friends are wrong about a historical Adam. Somewhere along the line there’s a 4+4 = 7 thing as well so the calculation comes out right for the wrong reasons.

The way I see it is that there were many hominids or similar creatures, part of the long slow process of God’s good creation. And at a particular time God called a particular pair for a particular task: to look after his creation and make it flourish in a whole new way. Actually, this fits with the scientific evidence according to which there were some significant changes in the hominid population and lifestyle around 6000 years ago, though I wouldn’t myself put too much weight on that.

The point is that if you start, not with Adam and a “moral test,” but with Adam and Eve and a vocation (see Psalm 8), then a lot of things in Paul look significantly different. There is more to Paul—and to Genesis—than you might have thought. It all works, it’s all good, it’s all about God’s grace—and it’s about a justification through which humans are “put right” in order to get the original project back on track, so that we might be “putting-right” people for the world. That’s something that’s often been strangely absent from a Westminster Confession type of theology.

72 Comments

Fmr Cath

“A lifetime of working in some very different churches has taught me that people come with all kinds of odd ideas and that a little clear biblical teaching goes a long way, and also that sometimes people resist it nervously because “it’s not what they said in Sunday School.” I’m all for Sunday schools, but there is a time for people to grow up and see things differently” –
This is the most “true” statement “NTW” makes in the whole interview…. This man’s double talk goes round and round and gets NOWHERE. It’s no wonder that Christendom is loosing members from most churches today. The “spiritual leaders” have NO knowledge of GOD’S TRUTH.
(1Cor.1:18-21) 18 For the speech about the torture stake is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is God’s power. 19 For it is written: “I will make the wisdom of the wise men perish, and the intelligence of the intellectuals I will reject.” 20 Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this system of things? Has not God made the wisdom of the world foolish? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not get to know God through its wisdom, God was pleased through the foolishness of what is preached to save those believing.

Eric

I beg to differ, and I would challenge you to read anything NTW has written and still make that claim of double speak. To use Paul as proof text citations against this man is not only a travesty but completely absurd. Read his book on justification, the climax of the covenant, or his recent HUGE recent two volume series on Paul. He address the history of Pauline interpretation, every single angle, where he agrees and disagrees, and so much more, with clarity and precision, the furthest thing from double speak. I am a Roman Catholic and have found his many works both awesome and enlightening.

Daniel Betts

Mike

Fortunately, the only churches losing the most members are those who don’t know how to correctly spell the word “losing” and insist on printing EVERYTHING in ALL CAPS because they don’t think that ANYBODY can pick out their IMPORTANT POINTS without having it SHOUTED at them.

Daniel

NOW uses analogy far too much…which comes across as patronizing the rest of us. If that interview was helping in a court of law, the Judge would have stopped it and said,”Answer the question Dr. Wright”. The Bible’s claim about itself is divine revelation. You add anything to that beyond translation clarification and you are cursed. Again that is what the Bible says about itself and all who read it. Pre-Adamic hominids are OK as the Bible is silent on that, but Adam and Eve as allegories or lessons about occupations is heresy by biblical standards.

Daniel Jeskey

I’m sorry, Daniel, but we all go beyond translation clarification whenever we read the Bible. That’s why we’ve had debates over how to interpret scripture for as long as there have been readers of it. I mean OBVIOUSLY, if we take the four living creatures of Revelation 4 to be anything other than exactly what the text says, instead of a symbol or metaphor for the entire animal kingdom, than we are committing heresy because we are going beyond translation clarification.

Eric

Though I fear to ask this question, where Daniel is “The Bible’s claim about itself is divine revelation” in the Bible?

Secondly, the claim that anyone who “adds anything” to it beyond translation being cursed is itself adding something beyond translation clarification.

Everyone interprets a passage or pargraph or phrase, or letter, or book in the canon. Now one can certainly argue that such an interpretation is wrong, but that then goes to who has that authority to say such?

Again, I would ask those who are attacking a short interview of this great scholar, Pauline scholar at that, to pick up his recent volumes on Paul and actually read it.

Hebrews 4:12
For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Tim

Daniel,
I suspect that you and I would agree more with each other than with Wright on the precise nature and identity of Adam and Eve. But nowhere in this interview, or elsewhere, do I get the sense that Wright is treating Adam and Eve as merely “allegories or lessons about occupations.” As he stated in the interview:

“The way I see it is that there were many hominids or similar creatures, part of the long slow process of God’s good creation. And at a particular time God called a particular pair for a particular task: to look after his creation and make it flourish in a whole new way.”

“Calling a particular pair” (combined with his statements about significant changes in the hominid population around 6000 years ago, certainly sounds like he’s speaking of something within the realm of history, not *merely* a literary device.

He noted in a recent interview with Justin Breirley :
“What happens with Genesis 3; and I do think there is a historical correlate. OK, Genesis one, two, and three is wonderful picture language, but I do think there was a primal pair in a world of emerging hominids, that’s the way I read that.” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2014/01/23/evolution-death-adam-wright-rjs/

So while Wright may not affirm the historicity of Adam and Eve in the traditional sense (and certainly not in a young earth sense), he states clearly here and elsewhere his conviction about the necessity of a historical “primal pair” whose vocation from God had immense consequences for humanity.

“You add anything to that beyond translation clarification and you are cursed.” Perhaps, but you’ve said a mouthful there. “Translation clarification” contains an enormity of linguistics. Looking to the original Bible (and there are at least two of these: that coming from God and that meeting it in Man, just as in Christ) we still have the problem of linguistic meaning. That is, you have to deal with language. That is a sticky thing which you presuppose is something we can understand easily. We cannot. When you take that bucket of meaning from the original and pour it into another translated pail, you necessarily spill some. Difficult indeed.

Nate

Adam and Eve are not “allegories about occupations.” According to the interview Adam and Eve had a vocation. Literally, historically. If you’re not on board with this, you might want to just get out in the open that you’ve denied everything after Genesis 2.

Atheist Max

“Know this first of all, that there is no prophecy of scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation, for no prophecy ever came through human will; but rather human beings moved by the holy Spirit spoke under the influence of God.”
(2 Peter 20-21)

Dallas

I would like to add that Peter is not saying that we should not interpret the Bible, but that “no Scripture is of a private interpretation”. In other words, Scripture does not conform to our own interpretation, but it is to be interpreted through the Spirit of God who inspired it. This is directly opposed to the post-enlightenment relativity that is assumed today.

I wonder if we should also add that Christians interpret Scripture within communities of fellow Christians (the church). and thus avoid private interpretation that’s ‘just Jesus and me’, if you hear what I’m saying. This would also partially provide an answer to Max’s pointed questions about how to reliably access the Spirit of God. It seems to me that though there have been lots of interpretations about lots of different issues, the Christian tradition as a whole has a great deal of consensus about our faith (for example, as expressed in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds). Even traditions that say, “We don’t use the Creeds” still find ways of affirming their statements about the story of our faith.

Within community, on issues that are not primary, we listen together until we hear something that bears what Jesus and Paul would call good fruit. So, for example, every responsible Christian I know now rejects slavery, many of us ordain women or affirm their ministries in the churches, and some of us are starting to consider how we best love our GLBT brothers and sisters.

Thanks for hearing my thoughts!

Eric

Hi,
I am saying that, not implying. I would go even further, in that such passage doesn’t day anything about biblical inspiration at all, Old or New Testament.

I also don’t hold to the view that one can’t apply “interpretation” or scholarship to the canon. That was the absurd claim I was attempting to show doesn’t hold water. The canon itself must be viewed through the lens of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Modern biblical scholarship is a gift to the church, and anyone who has actually in these absurd comments actually read any NTW would then know what nonsense they are labeling this gifted man with.

John F.

The entirety of the Bible is not prophecy. The passage you quote may itself be a consequence of interpretation. The Old Testament was not written until hundreds or thousands of years after the events described. Most of the New Testament was not written until decades after the events described. I can’t quote verbatim what you wrote though I read it less than a minute ago. All recitation which is less than verbatim contains some interpretation. If, as some inerrantists claim, God guided the hands of those transcribing his holy words, why did God use different names for some of the same kings in Kings and in Chronicles. Claiming inerrancy plays into the hands of atheists and others who seek to discredit the power of the Bible. We worship God whose relationship with man is described in the Bible; we do not worship the Bible. Those who claim the Bible to be infallible, too often, fall victim to worship of the book itself, a form of idolatry.

Thank you for posting this. It is an underestimated bit of scripture, but one that should never be ignored. First there is the Spirit, THEN the Bible. We should always come to scripture first from the Spirit and with the Spirit. The Spirit interprets scripture and lends us its meaning. This would be helpful to those who view homosexuality as sin (I do not personally find this Biblical) just as it would have helped those slaveholders in ages past understand what is spiritually OF God.

Josh Wilson

Atheist Max,
Any time you’re taking blots of ink on a page and converting them into ideas and philosophies in your noggin, you’re translating. No PROPHECY comes through human will — but that passage is referencing personal interpretation devoid of the Spirit. Communal interpretation is pretty much the history of theology, and reading any passage of any book in any language involves the act of discerning both the meaning of the words (de dicto) and the meaning of the speaker (de re). To avoid either of these is to miss out on a tremendous deal of the speaker’s intent.

For instance: if I got on a date, and you ask how it went, and I reply “The lobster bisque was pretty good.” De dicto, I’m literally telling you that I enjoyed the lobster bisque. But you’d be pretty thick to miss the linguistic device I’m employing to imply by omission. In the same sense, yes. We bloody well do interpret (in one sense of the word). What we do NOT do is the form of interpretation practiced in Paul’s day that skews texts to back one’s point of view.

…Okay, actually a lot of Christians do just that. But shame on them. ^_^

I realise there are some Christians that take the passage you cite about “others being raised” as a metaphor, but from my perspective I have no problem with it being literal.

Whether or not the author of Matthew himself understood it as literal is a different (and much more difficult) question. (Matthew does odd things with a lot of Hebrew texts, compared to the other synoptics, Mark and Luke.)

Can you say more about “why *should* anyone believe your answer”? I have my own response in mind (something like, “Because you, within your own journey/study/etc, have reason to find it persuasive”), but I have this odd feeling I’m missing something that you consider important. Thanks!

Antoine S

I don’t agree with Jamie about Tom excluding himself from Evangelicalism, but yes, he has claimed to be Evangelical (of the UK variety). He wrote a booklet with JI Packer about Anglican Evangelicalism some years ago.

jamie black

Inerrancy is a perfectly valid response to a perfectly valid question. Since man’s beginning the veracity of God’s words whether written or verbally spoken have been questioned by the enemy of God The Satan. We must make clear our stance on the nature of scripture because we live in a world under the sway of the evil one according to 1st John. The attacks on scripture are when all is said and done an attack from the enemy of our souls and that is why it is vital that we make clear that Gods word is completely true and trustworthy… We need to affirm more than what Wright says “I take scripture seriously”. When people alledge that the scripture makes errors they are attracking the nature of God I.e that he cannot lie.

John F.

Questioning, wrestling with scripture is not attacking God. God is far greater than mans ability to describe in any book. Is it a sin to wrestle with God or to question God?. God as He is described in the Psalms or in Job does not think so. Jacob wrestled with God and was blessed by being re-named Israel. It is only when you claim the Bible to be inerrant that you reach the conclusion that to wrestle with God the equivalent of accusing him of lying.

The Satan? Question: Is Satan evil? The Jews do not believe so. They even believe he/it is a kind of employee/confidant/tester, one of God’s minions so to speak. Our idea of Satan most likely comes from Dante, not from the Bible (excepting Revelation, and let’s keep in mind what another, Martin Luther, thought of Revelation). As to inerrancy, that would all be well and good, IF we thought of language as a cloud of meaning, not a mathematical equation which it decidedly is not.

david

2+2=5, 4+4=7 That’s just as silly as 1+1+1=1. The man is just trying to keep a foot in every camp, trying to make a name for himself instead of letting the bible speak for itself. The bible claims divine inspiration, 2Tim 3:16. Are you going to back it up and take it for it’s word or not? Was Adam a hominid or similar creature and not a perfect man? So the last Adam (Jesus) was the equal of this hominid or similar creature too was he? Where is the redemption in that UNLESS THEY WERE BOTH PERFECT MEN?

dan

The canon was formed in the fourth century, 2Tim was written in the first century. But you probably think that revelation is an exact prediction of the future. Let me copy+paste a comment I made somwhere else:

INNERANCY goes like this:
You’re like people in the future – say a 100 years from now – listening to Eminem.
He talks about being a motherf***. Therefore you conclude that he had intercourse with his mother. That’s basically the way you read and treat the bible.

Ben

Just because you fail to understand his logic doesn’t mean that he is wrong. He wasn’t asserting the 2+2+5 and that 4+4=7. He was saying that if one were to believe those two things, they would think the answer of 2+2+4+4 is 12, and they would be correct, but they would have arrived to that conclusion based on two false assumptions. All he’s saying is that it’s possible to arrive at the right answer based on faulty logic.

When I look at that verse, it applies first to the OT. Christians extend it to the canon for logical reasons that are not stated explicitly in this verse. It doesn’t explicitly say what inspiration is either, but what it’s *for*: teaching etc “so that the [friend] of God may be equipped for every good work.” If inspiration has a function, it seems to me that there can be a legitimate Christian range of opinions about *theories* of inspiration, and we can all meaningful claim Scripture is inspired by God.

I take Tom very seriously as a teacher of the faith, even when I disagree with him. His writing on the bodily resurrection of Jesus, for example, is the best I’ve ever seen for defending a traditional (and I would say, biblical) stance on its utter importance for Christian faith.

Philip

His comments about the scripture reading our culture is a great correction on a flawed trend which see’s the Bible as an ancient book that is no longer relevant in a modern world. For the Christian who buys this logic, then the authority of scripture is compromised. If scripture is God’s timeless word to us, then it rightfully becomes the lenses through which any and all cultures are to be viewed through. This is not to discount valuable cultural traditions, but it brings the right discerning perspective on cultural ethics, practices and philosophies. This is a challenge for the church in a modern world, but as NT Wright mentions, the church must better discern and correct how the culture and our history has detrimentally influenced our biblical understandings. In a fallen world there must be something that stands outside that condition which informs what people do, believe and act on. For the Christian that is the scripture.

JOE BAILEY HYDEN

S. Garrington

The best thing about the writings of NT Wright is that 1. Only a few ivy walled college professors read him and 2. Nobody, (including NT Wright) can understand him…
Here is a quote and my questions….NT Wright Quote:
“I take the whole of scripture utterly seriously,
and I regret that many who call themselves “inerrantists” manage to avoid the real challenge at its heart, that is, Jesus’ announcing that in and through his work God really was “becoming king” over the world in a whole new way.

So I don’t call myself an “inerrantist” (a) because that word means what it means within a modernist rationalism, which I reject and

(b) because it
seems to me to have failed in delivering a full-blooded reading and living of what the Bible actually says.
It may have had a limited usefulness as a label against certain types of “modernist” denial,

but it buys into at least half of the rationalist worldview which was the real problem all along.”

Up to here I understand and agree.

(word/group not defined- without definition I don’t know if we are talking about the same people.)

What real challenge?
Who said that was the real challenge?
Who said anyone was trying to avoid it?
What does inerrancy have to do with that?

What do you think it means?
Define “Modernist rationalism” What does it mean then in English?

Define “it.”
Define “full-blooded” is that good or bad?

What makes you think you know what the Bible actually says?

Again what is “it?”
How much usefulness do you need to be more than limited?

Which half?
Is it he rationalist worldview that is the real problem? If so why even bring what people call themselves up?

ginette kelley

i object to the impression given that no one reads tom wrights books because i am a senior and have read and own most of his books including his ‘big four’ i have found them to be most interesting and based on a mans work as an historian and New testament scholar, as well as a priest, few can match his insights, so before you condemn the rest of us as Ivy league scholars i suggest you actually read what he has done and had printed, incidentally as someone who wanted to know more about my Lord Jesus i am also studying Biblical Hebrew to enable me to read and understand the Old testament in its original language, the language of Jesus Christ, I have just finished “Surprised by Scripture” and would recommend this as a starting point, or perhaps “Simply Jesus”

[…] I don’t think I’ve ever said “I am not an inerrantist.” But the controversies which gave rise to that label were strongly conditioned by a shrunken post-enlightenment rationalism, and I would hate to perpetuate that. It’s possible that “inerrancy” is, so to speak, the right answer to the wrong question. It’s a bit like “transubstantiation” in the Middle Ages: if someone asks, “Is Jesus really present in the breaking of the bread?” you have to say “Yes,” but if the only philosophical framework you have for doing so is Aristotle’s metaphysics you will come out with an answer which sends the wrong signals. – See more at: http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/2014/06/02/n-t-wright-bible-isnt-inerrantist/#sthash.YHlfRTM…; […]

[…] 原刊於此網站 NTW: I don’t think I’ve ever said “I am not an inerrantist.” But the controversies which gave rise to that label were strongly conditioned by a shrunken post-enlightenment rationalism, and I would hate to perpetuate that. It’s possible that “inerrancy” is, so to speak, the right answer to the wrong question. It’s a bit like “transubstantiation” in the Middle Ages: if someone asks, “Is Jesus really present in the breaking of the bread?” you have to say “Yes,” but if the only philosophical framework you have for doing so is Aristotle’s metaphysics you will come out with an answer which sends the wrong signals. http://faith100.org/3z0XU 聖經研究 贊助連結 […]

[…] saying that the “Bible” (whatever that term actually means) is full of errors, but as N. T. Wright recent stated that evangelicals often give the right answer for all the wrong questions. The models we have been […]

[…] believe there was a literal Adam but that it is a parable regarding the creation of mankind. [ ex. N.T. Wright] I think there is little significance in the fact that man came first other than that Adam realizes […]

[…] The brief interview is here. In the comments section below the interview we learn by negative example what tone to avoid in our own dialogue. Your conversation is welcome here as Russell and I continue to wrestle with reasons. […]